Get the latest information on coping with mental illness

NAMI Family-to-Family Education, a free, 12-session program for relatives and friends of people diagnosed with a mental illness, will be offered from 7 to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, starting March 8 in Franklin.

Sponsored by NAMI Appalachian South, the local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the course provides up-to-date information about bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses.

Trained family members teach the course, which balances education and skills training with self-care, emotional support and empowerment.

This Must Be the Place

Standing in line at the Old Europe coffee shop in downtown Asheville, I said that to my old friend, Jerica. It was a rainy Sunday evening and we’d just gotten out of a documentary screening (about Tim Leary and Ram Dass) at the Grail Moviehouse. While I was mulling over the cosmic nature and theme of the film and what our place is in the universe (as per usual), I looked over at Jerica and smiled.

Reading Room

Of course, we’re intended to read from cover to cover many books — novels, histories, biographies, and more. It would make little sense to begin Mark Helprin’s novel A Soldier of the Great War on page 340 of its 860 pages. We might open and commence reading Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat, on page 241, but we’d miss some of the…